◼ 60 Minutes asked the presidential nominees to face the kinds of serious questions this campaign has lacked. For neither candidate did it go well. Kamala Harris gave such a rambling, vacuous answer to a question about Israel that CBS edited it out of its broadcast. Bill Whitaker deserves credit for patiently demanding answers when Harris would not say how she plans to pay for $3 trillion in new spending and when her only answers to questions about this administration’s shifting border-enforcement policies were to talk about Congress. Even without a single unexpected gotcha question, Harris still can’t describe what her “plan” to bring down prices is, and claimed to own a Glock—the same sort of handgun she has repeatedly tried to ban. As for Donald Trump—who walked out of a 60 Minutes interview with Lesley Stahl in 2020—he backed out of an interview, leaving CBS and the Trump camp disputing whether he had agreed to it and Trump relitigating the network’s coverage of the Hunter Biden laptop story. To see a presidential nominee perform well in an exchange with an adversarial press, we will evidently have to wait until 2028.

◼ Since Hurricane Helene left a swath of devastation through America’s southeast, Representative Marjorie Taylor Greene (R., Ga.) has spent much of her time insisting that the hurricane was the result of some sinister governmental manipulation of the weather: “If your home or business or property is damaged or a loved one is killed by their weather modifications shouldn’t you be eligible for compensation? After all, did they ask you if you agreed to our weather being modified?” Her fellow representative Chuck Edwards (R.), who represents some of the hardest-hit communities in a western North Carolina district adjacent to Greene’s, issued a press release, which was emailed to constituents, to address some bizarre rumors he was hearing in his district. He reiterated that no one has the technology or ability to geoengineer a hurricane; applying for disaster assistance does not grant the federal government, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency, authority over or ownership of your property or land; the Federal Aviation Administration is not restricting access to airspace for Helene rescue and recovery operations; and FEMA is not confiscating or seizing supplies. When a crisis strikes, all of us face a choice of whether to be part of the solution or part of the problem. Both Edwards and Greene have made their choices clear.

◼ The hurricane came up in the vice-presidential debate. The question was about climate change, which the moderators suggested worsens the severity or increases the number of hurricanes. After Helene, Biden said, “No one can deny the impact of the climate crisis anymore.” Turn to just about any mainstream publication, and you can find a story quoting climate activists about why Helene and Milton, which hit Florida, were worsened or caused by climate change. What they can’t claim: any significant increase in the number or severity of Atlantic hurricanes making landfall in the U.S. since 1900. There is no trend either way. And it is a particularly sick aspect of our political culture that even after Democrats passed their giant climate bill called the “Inflation Reduction Act,” natural disasters leaving hundreds of Americans dead and countless properties destroyed are still seen as appropriate springboards for activists to call for corporate welfare for green energy.

◼ Few living Americans have stood longer against government persecution for their freedoms than Jack Phillips, the Christian Colorado baker hounded for declining to bake cakes celebrating same-sex weddings or gender transitions. He is finally free of the courts for the first time in twelve years after the Colorado supreme court threw out the latest case against him on procedural grounds. But it is a scandal that any of the lawsuits against Phillips were brought, and it is a scandal that the courts have not rejected them squarely on the merits, in terms that made plain that this must not happen here again. It took the Supreme Court two tries to clarify that an American has a right to refuse to violate his own conscience in his expressive work. The Colorado case was closer than it should have been: the 4–3 majority disclaimed any “opinion about the merits” and wrote that “nothing about today’s holding alters the protections afforded by CADA [the Colorado Antidiscrimination Act].” The dissent fretted that Phillips would conclude that his rights are more extensive than they are. So long as there are Americans like Jack Phillips, our liberties will be defended. But so long as there are those like the forces who arrayed against him, those liberties will need defending.

◼ It seems like a straightforward question: “Who won the 2020 presidential election?” But it is one that Republicans are reluctant to answer. The vice-presidential nominee, J. D. Vance, answered it recently: Trump won the election, he said. Others prefer to wave the question off, as Speaker Mike Johnson did on a Sunday show. Leaders ought to lead, and this includes telling people the truth even when the people don’t want to hear it, or especially then. In November 2022, Representative Dan Crenshaw (R., Texas) busted out with the truth. Speaking of the claim that the 2020 election had been stolen or rigged, he said, “It was always a lie. The whole thing was always a lie. And it was a lie meant to rile people up.” Republican politicians are frustrated that they keep being asked the question, but it’s not the media’s fault that they can’t answer it.

◼ Donald Trump should have a very strong pitch to Jewish Americans. Many consider Israel an important issue, and he was arguably the most supportive president of the Jewish state in history, while Kamala Harris spent the past year chastising Israel in its battle for survival as pro-Hamas leftists gained traction within her party. Instead of focusing on these points, Trump has undermined himself by repeatedly attacking Jews for insufficiently supporting him. The charge goes back years, but he’s been ramping it up in recent weeks. In a speech last month, he told a Jewish audience that if he lost the presidential election, “the Jewish people would really have a lot to do with that.” In an interview with Hugh Hewitt, he said, “I did more for Israel than anybody. I did more for the Jewish people than anybody. And it’s not reciprocal, as they say, not reciprocal.” Jews, like other Americans, have a variety of views and priorities. If he can’t persuade enough Americans to vote for him, that will be on him.

◼ When celebrated author-activist Ta-Nehisi Coates sat down with the hosts of CBS Mornings on September 30, he was expecting a sympathetic interview allowing him to present The Message, his new book likening Israel to the Jim Crow South and declaring its existence in any form to be morally illegitimate. Instead he received serious questioning from host Tony Dokoupil, leading to a tense but informative interview. One might have expected Dokoupil to be congratulated for asking tough questions of an author making extraordinary and one-sided (when not flatly ahistorical) claims. Instead, his network has chosen to humiliate him. After an outcry both internally and on social media, Dokoupil was formally reprimanded by CBS for “not meeting editorial standards,” made to apologize during an all-hands staff meeting, and ordered to attend sensitivity training given by the network’s own internal (and ominously named) “Race & Culture Unit.” Additional commentary on this massive public disgrace feels superfluous, but it should not surprise anyone that—four years after the supposed peak of woke mania—a journalist can be professionally canceled for merely asking serious questions of a man pre-designated as a cultural saint.

◼ Proposition O, a referendum on the ballot in San Francisco, would affirm that in “policy and law” the city will “support, protect, and expand reproductive rights and services.” Provisions of the measure include authorization for the city to post, outside pro-life pregnancy centers, signage indicating that they don’t perform abortions or offer abortifacients. It would refer prospective clients to facilities that do—in effect, advertising abortion facilities, which would not be required to bear equivalent signage referring their prospective clients to the city’s two pro-life pregnancy centers. Once again, the “pro-choice” side isn’t really about choice.

◼ The Centers for Disease Control released a new survey with some shocking data: In 2023, 3.3 percent of U.S. high-school students identified as transgender, and 2.2 percent identified as “questioning.” This isn’t normal. According to a 2022 survey from UCLA, only 0.5 percent of U.S. adults identified as transgender. In other words, the percentage of children who identify as transgender in U.S. high schools is five times the percentage of American adults who identify as such. Tragically—and unsurprisingly—69 percent of questioning students and 72 percent of transgender students “experienced persistent feelings of sadness or hopelessness.” Approximately 26 percent of transgender and questioning students attempted suicide in the past year. The CDC concluded that “more effort is necessary to ensure that the health and well-being of youths who are socially marginalized is prioritized.” Might anyone suggest to the CDC that gender confusion itself isn’t healthy for kids?

◼ The Appalachian Trail, a hiking route that stretches from Maine to Georgia, is more than 2,000 miles long. Millions visit some portion of it each year. Among them are a few thousand who try to traverse its multifaceted entirety. Only about a quarter succeed. In 2017, Tara Dower joined the unsuccessful three-fourths when she suffered a panic attack mid attempt. In the years since, however, Dower became a successful ultramarathoner. Still stung by her prior failure, she set a goal that only fellow lunatics in the distance-running community could even begin to comprehend: not just to return to the trail for a second attempt but to break the record for completing it in the least time. She set out on a support-team-assisted journey of sometimes up to 60 miles a day, subsisting on Goldfish and gummies while moving and taking in larger meals at night, and often camping below the stars. Hoping to beat Karel Sabbe, the previous record-holder, who, Dower admitted, was faster, she slept less (five hours a night was standard) and moved for more hours each day. On September 21, 40 days and 18 hours after she started, a weary but triumphant Dower reached the trail’s terminus ten hours before Sabbe had. Powered, occasionally through tears, by her “love” of the trail, Dower may now enjoy not just the exhausted satisfaction familiar to distance athletes but also the personal gratification of having triumphed over her past self.